My Witness
He wasn't into this astronomy shit.
Even after coming from a family that loved nature, a belief he carried along with him into adulthood, he could never understand the importance of the heavens. It seemed either too technical or, worse yet, too girly.
Hell, he didn't believe in secrets, either. But he was living one.
He punched the brake, carefully guiding himself to the side of the road. When his truck rested, he rested himself. Head against the wheel, wondering why his mind couldn't just settle and cool. He was even, calm, and collected.
Breathing in, breathing out, heavily. Trying to sedate himself.
He lifted his eyes to the sky.
The sight before him was powerful, compelling. Streaks of white slipped across the sky, like drips of paint. The stars seemed to be playing tag with one another, as unserious as he wanted to be.
He tried to kill the romance of it. Stars dancing across the sky...it was like some shitty visual from a cut-rate romance novel, right?
Kurt was obsessed with stars. Not because they were pretty, shiny, or even because they were the symbol of his home country, but because of their fascinating existence.
Kurt had asked him once, facetiously, of course, what kept them from being born in another place. Why were they Earthlings, staring up at the sky like vagabond dreamers?
Christ, now he was thinking in shitty cut-rate poetry. When what he needed most of all was a clear head.
Kurt had told him, once, that this astronomical season would be fascinating, because through that haze one could see Mars most clearly. Well, he would be damned; there was a flickering red dot, like a warning signal in the dark waters of the sky.
All of this celestial drama over his head, and all he wished for was a beer.
No. More than that.
He was on his way to the mountains again; where he needed to be, and where Kurt could not reach him. He had lied and said he could see the stars better from his spread, where the air was crisp and sweet.
Funny that, suspended over the ocean and on perfectly flat land, he could see them just as well.
Just one more lie on a mountain of lies. But this one had been told to help Kurt. To drive him back to the arms of his wife. He felt foolishly noble, a martyr for no one but himself.
But this went beyond being himself, being Steve tonight.
Instead he hoisted his lukewarm coffee to the sky, as though its winking game could lighten the load, and even the minor weight in his hand.
And then, because couldn't help himself, he made one wish for himself, another for his lover...
And one for the baby girl lying in Kurt's arms back in Georgia, under the same stars.